those who may be designated the founders of this method, the Peripatetic Aristobulus. Belonging to a priestly family, he lived in Egypt in the first half of the second century B.C., and, as a teacher of Ptolemy Philomêtor, who very early acceded to power, he was held in special remembrance, so that he was called in brief the teacher.' The general position of the Judeans in Egypt about this time renders it by no means incredible that an accomplished member of their nation should have admission to the court and possess authority there. He wrote a work entitled 'Explanations of the Mosaic Law,'' in several parts, in which he addressed himself to Philomêtor, who was then evidently still very young (and who continued one of the best of the later Ptolemies). His object was, before the eyes of the king himself, to dissipate certain prejudices against the law. The fragments which remain prove the work to have been the composition of a refined mind; and in the treatment of such questions as how hands, arms, face, and feet, could be ascribed to God in the holy scriptures, how the descent of God on to Sinai in fire and other symbols of the same nature were to be understood, how God could have rested on the seventh day-we observe in fact the earliest and tenderest attempts at connected allegorical explanation placed as far as possible on a philosophical basis. In the book of Aristeas already mentioned3 allegory appears as a matter of course and in a highly-developed form.

Another object, however, soon called forth further efforts. It was sought to prove that the truths of the sacred books reappeared also in the greatest Greek sages and poets, a Homer

nowhere mentions him cannot surprise us, if, as is very possible, he had not a copy of his book. It is true that Eichhorn, following Rich. Simon and Hody, has attempted (Allgem. Biblioth. der Bib. Lit. v. p. 253 sqq.) to prove the supposititious character of the whole work, but his reasons are not really satisfactory. Valckenär, whose Diatrib. de Aristob, was probably written previously, maintains its genuineness, on grounds for the most part quite adequate. The two writers named Agathobulus, whom Anatolius in Eus. Ecc. Hist. vii. 32, has associated with Aristobulus, are otherwise wholly unknown.

He is placed under Philomêtor by Clement, Strom. i. p. 342, and Eus. Chron. ii. p. 239, Chron. Pasch. i. p. 337. Elsewhere he is placed by the Fathers (and even by Anatolius before Eusebius) under Philadelphus or Lagi, and is added to

the LXX themselves: but such confusions

are easily explicable. The oldest passage now known to us in which he is mentioned is found in 2 Macc. i. 10; the letter quoted there is certainly fictitious, but it shows us at any rate in what high esteem Aristobulus stood, so that he was considered in Palestine as the most eminent Judean in Egypt. At the same time, if with two MSS. we read the 148th instead of the 188th year of the Seleucidæ, this passage also places him under Philomêtor; the general connection, in fact, makes this reading necessary.

2

According to Anatolius in Eus. Ecc. Hist. vii. 32, in connection, however, with his incorrect representation (already mentioned) of the two Ptolemies, in whose time he places him. According to the version of Rufinus he came from the wellknown Paneas (p. 236).

3 P. 249.

and a Hesiod, an Orpheus and a Plato, and thus received confirmation at their hands. This comparison was not without foundation; and as soon as the confessors of the true God who had acquired Greek culture obtained a nearer insight into the treasures of the ancient Greek literature, they could not fail to be surprised to find there so much which came so near many of the finest utterances of their own sacred books. If this comparison had been carried through with historical thoroughness, it might have shown how the higher minds of all nations meet freely on the pure heights of truth, and how it is in the last resort the truth of things itself which moves the soul, and draws all better minds even involuntarily into more or less agreement with it. But the prevailing want of the historic spirit, and the rigid notions of the Judeans of that period, early led these efforts to quite other ends. It was thought that the ancient Greeks must have borrowed such truths from the sacred books, either by an older translation, or by journeys to Palestine; and no one ever once enquired more closely how much might be involved in this opinion that was only true within strict limits. Such assumptions, therefore, were soon pushed much further, just as one false step easily leads to a second, and one predilection that is not quite sound gives an impulse to another.

2

The activity with which Greek poetic art was then pursued in Alexandria and elsewhere, merely as an instrument of intellectual culture, led many of these Hellenists to devote themselves to it with increasing zeal, and they acquired such aptitude and ease that they even entered into competition with well-known Greek models, and handled subjects from their own history and religion in great poems. Thus, an Ezekiel composed a Greek drama on the March out of Egypt;"4 otherwise unknown Philo sang of 'Jerusalem' in epic strains;5 a Theodotus (perhaps a Samaritan) celebrated in epic style the history of the ancient Shechem; all three having certainly

1 Cf. Aristobulus as cited above, and also Josephus in his last work, where he expresses himself most cautiously; Contr. Ap. ii. 16, 36, 39.

2 P. 254.

3 The Fathers, who often used similar language, were in so doing only following the path laid in these centuries by the Judeans, and it was the more completely open to them because after the second destruction of Jerusalem the Judeans abandoned it entirely, so that the steps they had already taken upon it became quite remote.

6

an

See the tolerably long extracts in Euseb. Præp. Ev. ix. 28 sq., and Clem. Strom. i. p. 344 sqq.

According to the shorter extracts in Euseb. Præp. Ev. ix. 20, 24, 37. To identify this Philo with Philo Presbyter, as Viger strove to do, and as other writers have done after him, is impossible for this reason alone, that the latter, according to what we know of him through Josephus, Contr. Ap. i. 23, was a heathen. According to the extracts in Euseb. Præp. Ev. ix. 22.

flourished in the second or even the third century B.C.1 From this, however, it was but a small step further, in the freedom of literary practice in that age, to the attempt to teach the truth of the sacred books in the name and costume of the old Greek poets and prophets themselves, or even to transform by easy changes ancient sayings of celebrated Greeks into the same meaning. Out of this imitative art, accordingly, with hues that alternated between the two nationalities and religions, there arose a complete poetic literature, which ran on into the earliest ages of Christianity. For longer poems old Greek names like Orpheus and Phocylides were most frequently chosen, until it became more and more the practice to compose under the veil of Sibylline voices, which admitted so much of mystery, and seemed to stand nearer to the east, in order to bring home to the heathen the great truths of the unity and righteousness of God as well as the Messianic hopes. At what an early period all these attempts took shape among the Greek Jews, we learn most clearly from the work of Aristobulus already mentioned.3 Closer researches, however, have now established that the oldest Sibylline work preserved with tolerable completeness falls in the year 124 B.C., but other poems, such as that in the name of Phocylides, are much older, and by the early ages of Christianity the whole of this department of composition, which was once so flourishing, had passed through a most various development. It was quite in accordance with the general unfolding of the mind that in the third century, under the mild sun of the earlier Ptolemies, this hybrid literature should be still tender and shy, recommending to the heathen the truth of the higher religion, even without its own name, or the names of Israel or Judah. At a later stage, in the oldest Sibylline utterances now extant, it rose in open contest against heathenism, only hiding its growing boldness under the most ingenious veil, until, at the approach of the ultimate fall of the nation, it served simply as the vehicle of the

1 Because Eusebius only knows and cites all three through Alexander Polyhistor; but traces of the use of the LXX are found in Ezekiel, just as in Ecclus. xxxvi. 29, compared with Gen. ii. 18, 20. 2 As in the verse falsely cited from Od. v. 262 in support of a proof of the sabbath, dopov hμap env kal T TETÉλeσ70 äπavтa, in Euseb. Præp. Ev. xiii. 12; and the Sophoclean lines on the unity of God in the passage in Athenag. Presb. v., Clem. Strom. v. 14 (quoted

above, p. 248 note 1), though probably only derived from the Jewish redactor of the Hecatæan work.

3 Valckenär, indeed, supposes that Aristobulus had himself composed the verses quoted by him, and his whole Diatribe proceeds from this point of view; but the evidence is against this assumption, and at the time of Philomêtor their true authors might have long since become unknown.

dark anticipations and sighs of distracted souls, and finally found its only refuge in Christianity.'

The most unassuming and innocent attempts were those made by some Judeans and Samaritans, in the third and second centuries B.C., to open up to the heathen the comprehension of the ancient significance of their nation by historical delineations and researches. Unfortunately, our only knowledge of these works is derived from a few fragments in later writings, and with others our acquaintance is still more imperfect; moreover, this period was little favourable to deeper historical investigations into antiquity. Nevertheless, an attempt was thus made to treat the remote and obscure past scientifically, which could never again be laid entirely to rest.

3. The Progress of Culture in Palestine-The Son of

Sirach.

In Palestine, and particularly in Jerusalem itself, there was far too stout a kernel of the ancient people to allow the influence and intermingling of Greek culture to acquire such rapid and general predominance. Moreover, the temple service, in which the sacred usages of old were still kept up with scrupulous inflexibility, opposed a strong barrier to all deeper innovations; and the study of the law, which had flourished uninterruptedly from the time of Ezra, together with the increasing reverence for the other works of the ancient men of God and for the whole of Israel's mighty past, powerfully promoted continuous perseverance in the old national customs and pursuits.

How tenaciously the previous style of national life sought to maintain itself up to the beginning of the second century, and how little Greek culture was able to interrupt the steady course even of national literature, may be seen very clearly from the great book of the Wisdom of Jesus, son of Sirach. This is

On this subject see further the essay Über Entstehung, Inhalt und Werth der Sibyllischen Bücher, Göttingen, 1858; to which may be added the passages from Melito in Cureton's Spicil. Syr. p. 24, 5, Verecundus in Pitra's Spicil. Solesm. iv. p. 153 sq., and Hippolytus, Philosophumena, v. 16. Cf. also the Jahrbb. der Bibl. Wiss. ix. p. 299, x. p. 226, xi. p. 233 sqq., and Jac. Bernay's essay Über das Phokyleidische Gedicht, Berlin, 1856. A frag

ment of an old and probably SamaritanEgyptian Sibyl has been preserved in the latest portion, Sib. xi. 239-242, where Auds Kal λouós are prophesied to the Judeans in Egypt, with the later addition that this should take place during the 293 years (in ver. 244 Tpeîs Kal TρiotpiáKOVта should be read) of the eight (Ptolemean) kings of Egypt.

2 Cf. vol. i. pp. 198, 212.

the only really Palestinian work belonging to this Ptolemaic period which has been preserved; it supplies us, however, with abundant evidence on many points about the state of affairs in the great centre of the people. It is true that we are only acquainted with this very comprehensive book through the translation which the grandson of the author executed in Egypt, some years after his arrival there in the thirty-eighth year of Ptolemy Euergetes (also known as Physcon), i.e. 133 B.C. But, as the translator remarks in his preface, written in excellent Greek, his work was performed with great industry, exactness, and care. At any rate, it is very faithful, and often literal, even to wide departure from Greek usage,2 although he gives sufficient proof in his preface of his ability to write, when necessary, without any Hebraisms. It is probable, therefore, that the work was written before the beginning of the Maccabean struggles; and it nowhere contains the smallest allusion to the peculiar characteristics of their times, for the Messianic hopes, which are expressed with plenty of force3 in various passages, constitute rather the permanent ground of all the deeper and genuine Judean philosophy through all these centuries. Closer examination, however, of the different divisions and maxims of the whole book further proves that Jesus the son of Sirach of Jerusalem, who, at the close, designates himself with sufficient clearness as the writer, was by no means in the strictest sense of the word the original author of all that it contains; on the other hand, he combined two older books of proverbs, and published them

1

According to the genuine preface, towards the end of which evpúv must be read for evpov. Euergetes I. cannot be referred to, as he only reigned for twentyfive years. The other preface, which is found in the Complutensian Polyglott and in a very few MSS., contains nothing but the conjectures of a tolerably late and certainly Christian reader on the contents and value of the book, and particularly on the relation of the author to the translator. The gist of it is that the author only left his book almost perfected,' and the translator finally arranged it. This is a mere surmise on the part of this learned reader, based on certain marks of a want of order still easily perceptible in the work, but it is in itself without foundation.

2 Hence this book also requires a complete knowledge of Hebrew for its proper comprehension. That all its divi

4

again with some important

sions, moreover, were equally Hebraic may be seen from the sentences which allude to the meanings of Hebrew words, and which are to be found both at the beginning, vi. 21, and at the end, xliii. 9. In other respects the translator is not altogether secure against occasional misunderstanding of the Hebrew.

3 Cf. especially Ecclus. iv. 15, x. 13-17, xi. 5 sq., xxxii. 17-19, xxxiii. 1-12, xxxvi. 11-17, xxxvii. 25, xxxix. 23, xlviii. 10 sq.; even to the pre-eminence of the house of David there is significant allusion, xlv. 25 sq., xlviii. 15.

Ecclus. 1. 27 sq. That his grandson, the translator, should bear the same name is certainly quite possible in accordance with ancient usage, but the statement rests only on the second preface referred to above, which is not in itself a very trustworthy authority.